Need for Speed: Ichabod & Ravus chasing the Dream

[Ravus Sol]

I would still settle on the grassland 1N of the crab. You'll have a lot of food (banana, crabs, wheat, corn) and hapiness (dye, cotton). Don't forget that the Kuriotates have the tailor building avaiable at crafting. It gives 10% commerce and 1 hapiness for cotton, dyes and silk. So, building one you'd get a happy cap of 13 (4 normal, 1 palace, 3 sprawling, 2 cotton, 2 dyes, 1 fine clothes). A Size 13 Kuriotates city almost from the get go surpasses the bonus of a fully developed town, especially since we'd get +20% commerce too (and even more with the brewing house).

Just improving the dyes would give us a better tile then a fully developed town (which is on a 1f tile).

Going 2NE, 2E I think we could settle it in the next turn. It's up to you though. I want to take this game very lightly and have fun and the key to this is accepting your partner's decisions.

It's also nice to see that we have silk and rice too. +60% commerce cities to the kuriotates almost from the get go will be gold.

The bad thing is that this is a huge map. We won't be getting near the malakim/vamps before they have vampires. But, I really think that the airships will shine. Seriously! It'll be very funny to play with them. No one will be able to leave unprotected cities!

It is a better initial city over there... If we settle on the grassland instead of teh plains next to it we do lose the elvish forest city of Dardin. Plus if we go on the Plains I think that gives us more leeway to fit in another Kuriotate super city to the East. (It also lets us found next turn... I think the Grassland Spot could be 6 moves and cost us yet another turn.)

City Weighing
We lose:
Wheat above Coran in BFC
Cottan in BFC

We gain:
Tomasingen (Fully developed Town)
Dardin (Elvish forest cottage)

I will make up my mind next turn. (Will also check if I COULD get to the Grassland spot in one turn.)

You are right about the size... I think we could train and send out one squad of Riders if we got them out quickly. But we would have to pick a direction at random and hope it was the Malakim/Vamps.

Perhaps I will send the Kuriotate RatMan out West to try and see who is over there? If you circle around the Green Maw before approach the NW Rival Team won't know our own location.

I agree with the Fun angle. The Map itself seems to support that. There seems to be multiple spots down south that could be good Capital Locations. Have fun with the Settler, you really get good range and sight on that thing when you start moving around.

I still hope we can get out Horseback Riding as a tech early. But I do like the Airships :neenernee So having that as another end-game aim would be good.

Possible Tech Paths:
Calender, This would help growth with Agrarian Farms and also with economy with the dyes and cottons.

Mysticism, For Kuriotate super cities, Helps with expansion into the Corner.

Code of Laws, Beeline for Cottages and Aristocracy for Hippus.

Strangly enough I spy no Animal resources... None. Almost like the Broken Erebus God is trying to tempt us NOT to get early Riders...

[Brian Shanahan]

I have to go with 1N of the crab as well (as I originally said). The amount of goodies avaliable are just too much to ignore, plus at least two hills, some nice plains, a lumbermill, lots of forests and lots of grassland river to work them, giving a fairly good capital production wise.

And down south I'd go with 1 W of Dendros, it gives you 2 corns, 2 earth mana, a farm and a forested cottage, all straight away. City 2 can then go on the Broken lands hill to the west to grab corn, rice, cotton, and Nature mana.

Oh and seeing as it'll probably be posted elsewhere, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QUjGxgbC68

[Ravus Sol]

I have to go with 1N of the crab as well (as I originally said). The amount of goodies avaliable are just too much to ignore, plus at least two hills, some nice plains, a lumbermill, lots of forests and lots of grassland river to work them, giving a fairly good capital production wise.

And down south I'd go with 1 W of Dendros, it gives you 2 corns, 2 earth mana, a farm and a forested cottage, all straight away. City 2 can then go on the Broken lands hill to the west to grab corn, rice, cotton, and Nature mana.

Oh and seeing as it'll probably be posted elsewhere, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QUjGxgbC68

We'll see if I can get to that piece of land next turn... Otherwise i'll be really tempted to take second best so that i can found 2nd turn not 3rd.

Damn, don't tempt me to start naming stuff from Fallout instead of Poems

P.S Is it just me or is team deluxe, Dwarves/Orcs, the fan favourite?

[Ichabod]

Played my turn, Ravus. I'll just do a quick update.

I set the research to Calendar, since I already settled on turn 0. My capital is not that good, having a lot of unusable tiles and few hills. But it's good enough compared to the options I had. We'll need to prioritize lumbermills for production, though.

Good news is that you can settle 1N of the crabs on turn 1.

Bad news, I couldn't avoid popping a hut with my capital's borders. We gained 18 gold from it ().

OMG! ARMAGGEDON IS COMING! news, darrel used his world spell before he met any barbarians. He's now sitting in a 47000 power graph and Acheron is in the game.

Here's Tasunke after he heard about this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6QCg8IG8Nc -> you may forward to 4:00 if you don't want to watch it full.

P.S.: Ilios and Darrell popped a tech from a hut to turn the insult into injury.

P.S.2: Tasunke will be renamed Don Quixote next turn.

[Ravus Sol]

Played my turn, Ravus. I'll just do a quick update.

I set the research to Calendar, since I already settled on turn 0. My capital is not that good, having a lot of unusable tiles and few hills. But it's good enough compared to the options I had. We'll need to prioritize lumbermills for production, though.

Good news is that you can settle 1N of the crabs on turn 1.

It's okay quick updates are fine when we can just see what each other has done within the game itself.

Calender seems to be a good choice but i'm wondering where you chose as your starting plot now... I assume in the east and you got more peaks then we thought, or the south and got more sea tiles. Will be interesting to see when the turn rolls round.

Nice on the Crab Location!

Bad news, I couldn't avoid popping a hut with my capital's borders. We gained 18 gold from it ().

OMG! ARMAGGEDON IS COMING! news, darrel used his world spell before he met any barbarians. He's now sitting in a 47000 power graph and Acheron is in the game.

Here's Tasunke after he heard about this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6QCg8IG8Nc -> you may forward to 4:00 if you don't want to watch it full.

P.S.: Ilios and Darrell popped a tech from a hut to turn the insult into injury.

P.S.2: Tasunke will be renamed Don Quixote next turn.

wow so we get money and they get tech... I think we need to assume we will have no luck from the RNG gods this game.

And Jesus! Did the Map maker not plan for the Orcs popping that spell?!?! I Hope he at least didn't include any Sons. Otherwise this game is over before it has begun. In fact that Power graph itself implies the game could allready be over. I'm now thinking we just go Calender then beeline Horseback Riding. It's not good. But the Resources and free towns will let us limp there and then we can spam out horses which can beat off the Orc horde.

P.S wondering if the flaw is the "extra unit" curse. Everytime you go into WB to edit you add in an extra goblin archer to the goblin forts. If they weren't taken out there could have been a dozen of them to each fort. Could help explain the jump. There should have been no other goblin/orc units on the board apart from archers or pre-set units.

[Ravus Sol]

P.P.S how did you know about Archeron?

[Ichabod]

It's in the turn log. Acheron was created, Brigit was created (IIRC), Mardoc uses River of Blood, Darrell uses For the Horde were all in the turn log.

It seems that Jkaen is moving during this weekend, so I'll have time to post a proper update before you play. I'll probably do it later today.

Just anotehr bits of info: I went worker first and I'm planning to move my scout to the southeastern area. There's a lot of huts in the west/northwest that you'll have to pop. I really think we should keep our warriors fortified in capital. Darrell probably has a lot of goblin archers right now.

[Ravus Sol]

I was tempted to use my own worldspell to get the best tiles this turn... But figured it was better to wait untill the 2nd and 3rd Cities are settled.

Founded above the crabs! Calender is now down to 8 turns, Worker in 10. I'm really thinking that we should run for riders... worries about that high Orc score. I can't honestly think of anything else we need. We have enough extra improvements with the pre-set stuff. Including towns, farms, mines and workshops. The only other option would be to Run to Aristocracy but i'd feel safer doing that after getting horses.

I liked where you settled. Its got a lot of food to fuel a land grab and i love the Elvish cottage in the BFC.

My scout has been renamed and is heading NW and i'll try and see who's over there... Or find where the Orc Horde is coming from... I'm expecting the centre. I might actually loop down there... it's the most logical place for a horde to be and we need to know how long we have to prepare defences if they head our way.

I agree with the Warriors and mine is running home quickly. I really hope there isn't a load of forts in each corner.

I'll post pictures tomorrow.

[Ichabod]

Well, the barbs are probably in the center. Even with our enormous settler visibility range, we haven't spotted one yet. Darrell didn't spot barbs at the beggining of his turn either, since he'd have instantly declared war and wouldn't be able to use his worldspell.

Darrell won't be able to keep a lot of his army for long. With 10 units outside his borders, he'd be severely criplled regarding tech and my guess is that he has more. If we get early horsemen, even if he send some archers to find us, we'll be able to kill them. The situation is not as bad as I thought it would be (no sons is a relief too).

My capital won't be a killer long term city, but it's nice enough. Also, it would be stupid for me to get the top spots, because your cities can get so much more of good land.

We should think about a way to conenct our cities. Sharing resources and trade routes is important. Or do we have a resource connection from the start? I really don't know a thing about team games .

[Ravus Sol]

Well, the barbs are probably in the center. Even with our enormous settler visibility range, we haven't spotted one yet. Darrell didn't spot barbs at the beggining of his turn either, since he'd have instantly declared war and wouldn't be able to use his worldspell.

Darrell won't be able to keep a lot of his army for long. With 10 units outside his borders, he'd be severely criplled regarding tech and my guess is that he has more. If we get early horsemen, even if he send some archers to find us, we'll be able to kill them. The situation is not as bad as I thought it would be (no sons is a relief too).

My capital won't be a killer long term city, but it's nice enough. Also, it would be stupid for me to get the top spots, because your cities can get so much more of good land.

We should think about a way to conenct our cities. Sharing resources and trade routes is important. Or do we have a resource connection from the start? I really don't know a thing about team games .

I will send my scout into the centre after grabbing some huts then. We might get lucky with huts and pop something good.

He might not be able to keep it long but for other people that THREAT is going to upset some teching plans. Team Blight wouldn't normally have any military in their rush to vamps but now they may have to side trek to get a more powerful unit to oust an army. Team Whoopass is the same. Only we have the awesome reason to go early Horsemen.

There still seem to be a lot of good spots around and I've marked where I may go for city #1 & #2 expansion. But my unit after the worker may be another scout to explore the corner and grab the extra huts.

We don't have a connection from the start... I don't think our cultural borders will gain us trade routes either. But to be honest this is just more reason for us to grab exploration after horsemen. The roads can connect our capitals and increase the speed at which we can redeploy. I will be able to send Centaurs from my capital to yours in a single turn. That's nothing to sneer at. (Personally I'm hoping for exploration from a hut.)